The New Flourish Website: A journey of twists and turns

You probably know from my six months of hinting that creating this new website for Flourish has been far from easy. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. Creating the initial brand identity was incredibly difficult, but updating something that was right in so many aspects but not working in others has been a real journey.

I think the hardest thing is that when you’re designing your own stuff, you don’t have that objectivity and distance that comes so naturally when you’re working on a client project. Some ideas get quashed instantly and others perhaps get taken too far for a while because of that difficulty in seeing the wood for the trees.

I thought it might be fun to share the journey we’ve been on over the past six months (and more) in creating the Flourish site because I’d love to give you an insight into the process and also the didn’t runs/ also rans.

Where we started from

I know this isn’t dreadful, but the truth is that design has moved on, and whilst I really love the feel of this website, in terms of how it looks, it just wasn’t doing us justice. Over the past couple of years we’ve really grown as a creative team and this just wasn’t doing our capabilities justice. The challenge at first was that we forgot that whilst we didn’t like how this looked, it had an important feel that we needed to be careful not to lose.

Waaaay back when

August 2011 we got as far as building this website but thankfully didn’t ever set it live or finish the build. It has more of the grown up and smart feel that we wanted, but it also completely lost it’s flair and personality. Thankfully some very kind clients pointed out that it just wasn’t “us” (something that’s really hard to see when you’re in the thick of designing for yourselves).

Brand Stylists Mark One

Personally I loved the yellow and the smartness of this, but somewhere we lost the Flourishness.

Mark Two

Aaaah, that’s better! Whiter and brighter and the circles make it feel more Spring like don’t they (Flourish is the Spring side of Autumn). We loved those illustrations too but they just weren’t right!

Mark Three

New boy James had the unenviable task of taking over the website design when we realised we were hitting a brick wall, and this has many of the elements that are right: stylists hats, gorgeous patterns and beautiful imagery, but the texture and styling just make it feel too staid and not expressive enough.

Mark Four

Caroline worked on the final designs and I think has really captured the essence of Flourish. Once she had the main concepts in place it was a real team effort to create banners, illustrations, buttons and pattern and each and every one of the team has had a hand in creating something just utterly knockout.

Even from this point we took our time to make sure each element was right and sending out the right signals. I know from all the tweets and lovely emails you’ve sent us that it’s been worth the effort and I’m so excited about what the future holds for Flourish. Exciting times!

2 Comments

Wow!! It’s lovely to see the final design together with the various stages you went through for comparison. I love the feel of it, I think you’ve kept the ‘Flourish-ness’ but it feels more sophisticated, and grown up! I love the new Flourish identity, well done to you all